African Refugees: Reflections on the African Refugee Problem

Politics & Social Sciences

Kibreab, Gaim

Social Sciences

Africa World Pr

The Sudan: From Subsistence to Wage Labor

Business & Money

Economics

Red Sea Pr

What impact do displaced people and refugees have on the place where they eke out their living from resources under pressure? Is land degradation due to natural factors or to the people on the edge? How do the people react to the loss of income due to land degradation? Do they become more innovative and more responsive to changes in agricultural techniques? Or do their land use practices become ever more exploitative? Most policies concerned with the settlement of the nomads, peasants, refugees, internally displaced persons and returnees fail to take into account their impact on the environment. In this important book, Gaim Kibreab questions the degree of the impact of Eritreans displaced by the war with Ethiopia on a region of the Sudan. Was the land degradation on and around the scheme due to humans and their livestock? The study provides evidence to question many assumptions.

People on the Edge in the Horn: Displacement, Land Use & the Environment in the Gedaref Region, Sudan

Eritrean independence under the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (now the People's Front for Democracy and Justice) became an international cause celebre during the 1980s. Eritrea was the first African nation to gain independence in the post-colonial period and appeared to be opening a new and progressive path in African politics. But the promise of the revolution was soon betrayed by the outbreak of war with Ethiopia, the PFDJ's increasingly repressive domestic policies, its mismanagement of the country's economy, and its hostile relations with its neighbours. The PFDJ government dismantled existing formal and informal institutions, crippled the private sector, banned private newspapers, civil and political society organisations, expelled international NGOs and aid agencies when over two-thirds of the population were dependent on food aid, detained without trial journalists, thousands of dissidents, and former leaders of the liberation struggle, and turned national service from an instrument of nation building and national integration into an instrument of open-ended forced labour. In this well-researched first account of post-independence Eritrea, Gaim Kibreab gives a detailed and critical analysis of how things went woefully wrong and how the former 'liberators' turned into oppressors with no respect for the rule of law, human rights and religious freedom. GAIM KIBREAB is Professor of Research &amp; Director of Refugee Studies, Department of Social &amp; Policy Studies, London South Bank University Published in association with the Nordiska Afrikainstitutet.

Eritrea: A Dream Deferred (Eastern Africa Series, 5)

Literature & Fiction

World Literature

James Currey

The Eritrean National Service: Servitude for "the common good" and the Youth Exodus (Eastern Africa Series, 37)

The Eritrean National Service (ENS) lies at the core of the post-independence state, not only supplying its military, but affecting every aspect of the country's economy, its social services, its public sector and its politics. Over half the workforce are forcibly enrolled into it by the government, driving the country's youth to escape national service by seeking employment and asylum elsewhere. Yet how did the ENS, which began during the 1961-91 liberation struggle as part of the idea of the "common good" - in which individual interests were sacrificed in pursuit of the grand scheme of independence and the country's development - degenerate into forced labour and a modern form of slavery? And why, when Eritrea no longer faces existential threat, does the government continue to demand such service from its citizens? This book provides for the first time an in-depth and critical scrutiny of the ENS's achievements and failures and its overarching impact on the social fabric of Eritrea. The author discusses the historical backdrop to the ENS and the rationales underlying it; its goals and objectives; its transformative effects, as well as its impact on the country's defence capability, national unity, national identity construction and nation-building. He also analyses the extent to which the national service functions as an effective mechanism of transmitting the core values of the liberation struggle to the conscripts and through them to the rest of country's population. Finally, the book assesses whether the core aims and objectives of the ENS proclaimed by various governments have been or are in the process of being accomplished and, drawing on the testimony of the hitherto voiceless conscripts themselves, its impact on their lives and livelihoods. GAIM KIBREAB is Professor of Research and Director of Refugee Studies, School of Law and Social Science, London South Bank University. He is the author of Eritrea: A Dream Deferred (James Currey, 2009) and People on the Edge in the Horn (James Currey, 1996). Table of Contents Foreword by Christopher Clapham Introduction National/Military Service in Africa: Theories and Concepts The Government and the Structure of the Eritrean Defence Force The Nature of the ENS and its Effectiveness as a Fighting Force The ENS as a Mechanism for Preserving and Transmitting the Core Values of the Liberation Struggle The Eritrean National Service: A Vehicle for National Unity and Cohesion The Eritrean National Service and Forced Equality The Overarching Impact of the ENS on the Social Fabric of Eritrean Society Impact of the Open-Ended ENS on Families and Conscripts Conclusion

History

Africa

Reflections on the African refugee problem: Critical analysis of some basic assumptions (Research report / Scandinavian Institute of African Studies)

Scandinavian Institute of African Studies

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